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Churches use a lot of Cardboard Tubes in acoustical room fixes because they are very effective in getting the room performance they want and need. Cardboard Tube not only outperform all other acoustical products in churches but they are also the most affordable. There is nothing that can do what half round tubes can do, even at 40 times the cost.

Ok then, what if you don’t like the look of cardboard tubes around your worship space. Here is an option some churches have been willing to spend a little extra for.

These look like standard 5 inch deep absorbing panels. They are not. These are Sono Tubes mounted in a wooden frame and covered with cloth.

The cloth was an added expense and it was worth it. The fire rated cloth is expensive and before covering the panels, you want to make sure the acoustical system is going to work and work it did. The church is very happy with the results and they are enjoying the room.

This is what the installation looked like before it was covered. The wooden frame has no effect on the performance of the half round tubes. The cloth only affects frequencies above 10,000 Hertz which means they have no effect on speech or music. In this installation three sizes of tubes were used.

At the bottom is a huge video wall screen. On the wall are the Sono Tubes. Yes, the tubes will work behind a vinyl screen. If you notice the pattern of the diffusers on the wall. that pattern was needed to control lower mids and bass sound energy. This pattern was pretested in our test room.

Here is the finished installation of the video system. It takes three projectors for each screen. The centre screen is a video wall.

Photos courtesy of Frederic Lachance of Northside Church in Coquitlam BC, 2017.

There are dozens of acoustical spreadsheets that come with the promise of a viable acoustical fix. Some sheets are for studios and some are for home theatres. There are also other spreadsheets for larger rooms. As rooms get larger, (as in Christian Churches and worship centers) those spreadsheets become less accurate. Sure, the better spreadsheets adds more variable to compensate for the limitations, but the limitations are still there. Furthermore, with all of the spreadsheets, you have to add an additional line to include a fudge factor. In some spreadsheets you need to add multiple fudge factor lines.

When a person tries to use an acoustical spreadsheet, they are only looking at one parameter of the rooms acoustics. You are only looking at “time.” The problem is, for churches, and I MEAN ALL ROOMS WHERE MORE THAN 150 PEOPLE GATHER TO WORSHIP – there are other parameters that are equally or more important than “time.” Acoustical problems always come in layers. The minimum number of layers of acoustical sound management in a worship space is 4 layers. As a worship space becomes larger, the more layers you have to attend to. “Time” becomes only a fraction of the real acoustical problems you are faced with. Obviously you can’t see them but you can measure them if you are trained to recognize when you hear them.

The problem with spreadsheets is that they are not looking issues such as standing waves – and every church – regardless of shape has standing waves (unless the space is acoustically managed in the first place which also means this article is not for you.) Spreadsheets are not looking at excessive noise from early and late reflections. They are not looking at bass buildup often found in the corners of a room. They are not looking at flutter echoes and full syllable echoes. These are all sound effects than can’t be dialed out with equalizers, delays, algorithms and the next miracle digital gadget or software. (Yet that is how most sound system designers try to deal with room acoustics.)

Regardless of a persons acoustical training, knowledge or experience, a spreadsheet cannot tell you when standing waves are masking flutter echoes. A spreadsheet cannot tell you when bass build up is masking a standing wave issue. A spreadsheet can’t tell you how much the early and later reflections are reducing music and speech intelligibility.

All that a spreadsheet can tell you is how much “time” it takes for a sound to decay in a room either as an average number. Some spreadsheets are much more detailed and they have been written as an attempt to calculate a room in octaves or by 1/3rd octaves. If it was only that easy. Measuring and calculating time is just a sliver of the acoustical signature of a space people worship in.

It takes a lot of training to learn Church acoustics. The same applies to Studio Acoustics, Recital Halls, Concert halls and lecture halls. All of these rooms have specific acoustical needs and they all require a unique set of skills to properly fix them.

What makes a church so complicated is in how a church is used. When a church is designed as a “church,” it becomes the most multipurpose space there is because of all the ways a worship space is used. When you say you want the worship space to be more “Multi-Purpose” or more flexible in it use, you are actually limiting what a basic worship space is supposed to be able to do.

At the end of the day, an acoustical spreadsheet is only a small snapshot into church acoustics. It can’t help with congregational singing, it can’t help with a noisy stage for a praise and worship team or choir and it can’t help with drum issues or speech intelligibility.

What often happens is with the spreadsheet, it will guide you to a solution that is based on absorption. When an acoustical fix is based around absorption, you wind up “killing” the room for all music – especially contemporary music and congregational singing – and the masking effects of the other acoustical issues get worse. Sure, the room sounds more tame than it was before, but the ability to understand speech is either no better than before or it has gotten worse. Before you know it, everyone gets in ear monitors and all of the members of the worship team have to sign an insurance liability waver stating that they will not sue the church for any future health problems with hearing loss. Seriously, is that the kind of acoustical fix you want?

That is what you get when you turn to an acoustical solution based only on spreadsheet calculations. To top it all off, the results are not much better when using computer simulation software programs. Simulation programs only show you the results at one frequency at a time. The computer generated image may be 3D but the patterns they show are only one frequency at a time – even when it is averaged out. To see large room acoustics in a simulation, you need to be able to see the results in 4D. Hologram can’t show you 4D images. That ability hasn’t been invented yet. You need to be able to see sound in 4 dimensions because all sounds are complex. Every sound made on earth is a combination of wave lengths that are generated at the same time. Some parts of a sound are measured in feet and some in inches. There is no way to visually see 100 Hertz, which is 11 ft long, and 4000 Hertz which is 3.5 inches long, at the same time in the same place yet in real life, that is what is happening with sound. We all take sound for granted but the complexity of sound is extensive.

But doesn’t sound follow the rules of fluid dynamic and other laws of physics? Of course it does, but only when you examine one frequency at a time and that frequency is never a pure tone. It is always complex. The only place you can measure and see a pure tone is in a machine like an oscilloscope and the moment you launch that sound into the air, it becomes complex. Just as sound is complex, so are the acoustical fixes for churches.

This is one way to test an acoustical solution before you recommend it to a church. Have your own testing facility. Whatever research is done in this room, it mathematical translates perfectly when it is scaled up into a larger space.

As a mantra, remember this: for all Christian churches, acoustical problems come in layers and whatever fix you choose, it has to address all of the layers in one step – which is possible if you want an affordable fix. There are many tools in the Acousticians Tool Box to fix a worship space. There are diffusers, resonators, traps and other devices that can address the needs of a church’s acoustics. There are also stand-alone electronic solutions that work in certain worship spaces. You need a lot of training to know which ones you need, what combinations you need and how to use them, and the last place you want to do your training and experimenting is on your customers.

If you are doing Church Acoustics or trying to fix your own church, don’t do it as an experiment and you know it will be an experiment the moment someone in your committee say something like, “lets try this as see what happens.” With those words, the acoustical solution is already doomed. Experts like myself can tell you the results the second you decide to try something and long before you apply the materials.

History shows that after a church spends it’s money on a thing such as acoustics, it will not be able to afford to fix any mistakes for decades. If the results makes the room worse or no better than before, then you are subjecting the church members to more sound abuse for years to come and we don’t want that. Spreadsheets don’t fix churches, good training and expert help does. (It’s also cheaper in the end to get expert help.)

Finally, consider this. The internet has become a treasure trove of knowledge. That knowledge is often presented as expert information offering sure fire solutions. I scan the internet often to see what is out there. There is a lot of great information and there are a lot of myths. When you collect all of that info, it only holds a fraction of the total knowledge about church acoustics. If we were to put a percentage on it, the internet holds about 2% of the total knowledge there is for church acoustics. The books hold another 8% of what there is to know about church acoustics. Church acoustics is so complicated that often, a seasoned acoustical expert like myself will have to fix one of a kind acoustical fixes often. Those unique fixes are often not shared because others may think that the one of a kind fix would be needed in every other church that has the same problem. You can have 10 churches with the same acoustical problem but in every one the fix has to be modified because of the other variables that have to be included. The rest of the knowledge about church acoustics is held by experts because the church community hasn’t taken ownership of that knowledge yet and there is no system in place for churches to share their experiences in order to avoid mistakes in the future. What is missing is the wisdomin knowing what acoustical fixes will enhance worship verse what acoustical fixes exchanges one set of problems for another set of problems. Problems which holds back and undermines the real worship experience the church leaders want you to participate in.

All church can have great acoustics and sound. If each church denomination or independent church were to set-up their own “Church Sound Standards” for the performance of their sound systems and worships space acoustics, churches will become the kind of places where people want to go. Once a standard is set, every church will have a Worship everyone can enjoy and appreciate.

The simple answer is as follows. Half, quart or third round devices or objects individually just scatter sound. A single barrel diffuser or tube radiator as I often call them just create a very uneven distribution of sound. As single units, it gives about the same amount of performance as placing a flat object of the same size and placing at a 15 to 35 degree angle on a wall.

When using barrel diffusers in various sizes and/or in spacing varying from 0 to 30 inches and apply them to all of the walls in a confined space, you are creating a diffusive field. You’re turning the church walls into a phase coherent sound field – like churches of yester year built between the 1400’s to 1700’s. When barrel tubes are used as a system you can program them to only manage the acoustical problems you want to get rid of and at the same time create a more desirable sound field like real reverberation that is musical and supportive to congregational singing.

Barrel tubes spaced too far apart just scatter the sound and reduces some bass but does nothing much else. Instead, you can program the diffusers to manage standing waves, bass buildup, notch a frequency or two and equalize a room. You can also program them to lower stage noise, manage monitor spill into the audience and improve congregational singing. They can also be programs to make the sound system perform better.

The software to program barrel diffusers is still in development. In the meantime, a test room, and a data base of real world testing is the best way to predict the final outcomes. Try and program a digital EQ to cut 350 hertz 40dB. It can be done but it sounds awful. When you program tube radiators to cut 40dB, it sounds sweet.

Congregations can sing at 105dBa. At least that is what they do in churches that I have fixed and that does happen in other churches too, that perform well. When they do sing that loud, what do you do? Or, what do you do when the congregation is starting to drown out the sound system?

Keep pushing the sound system to keep up with them.

Keep the sound system at 90dB and let the congregations voices dominate.

Lower the sound system FOH levels so that the congregation can enjoy what they are doing.

Push the sound system to drown out the congregation as always regardless if the sound system is distorting or not.

Acoustics decides the Aesthetics of a church. If the acoustics are bad, the aesthetics looks one way. When the acoustics are good, the aesthetics looks another way. Did you know that the average person without training can virtually tell what the aesthetics looks like in a church by how it sounds? Did you also know that churches with good acoustics when first built often have better aesthetics that lasts the lifetime of the worship space?

It has been brought to my attention by a number of church members about who gets to decide the final aesthetics of worship space interiors. Church members of some newly built churches which are less than one year old were pointing out to me that in the end, we acoustical designers get to ultimately decide the final aesthetics of a church – not the architect, no matter how much effort an Architect puts into the aesthetics of a worship space. If this sounds familiar then check out my post in 2012 where I made a similar post. This discussion comes up often.

It seems that when acoustics are included in the design stage of a worship space, the Architect has the last say on the rooms aesthetics – assuming the acoustical plans are not compromised later on. When acoustics are left out of the design phase of planning a new church, it is people like me that get the final say in the room aesthetics. Whether it is while the building is being built or anytime later – even 200 years later, it is people such as myself that often make the final aesthetic changes that will last the life time of a church building.

The good news is, is that when we are included in the design phase of a new church, often our acoustical designs blend into the architecture and it is often not seen or at least not seen as an acoustical add-on. In fact, often our acoustical designs come off as the Architects design of the worship space and at times to the untrained person it looks like we had done nothing. Where friction often comes up, is when after the design of the church has been completed and the church board has given the green light, that is when someone raises the issue of acoustics. Often there are major acoustical issues as what is taught in Architectural schools is about concert hall acoustics, school auditorium acoustics and lecture room acoustics.

Church acoustics is totally different and I don’t know of any place were “church acoustics” is taught. This is often why bringing someone like me after a finished design is presented to a church where butting heads starts. When there are glaring mistakes being made and we point them out, it often means major design changes which often cost money to change at this phase. Once past the design phase, churches are rarely ready to pay for design changes that often means delaying the project which increases costs higher. As a result acoustics is usually left until the church is finished. But wait! A church is not finished until the acoustics are done.

As stated before, it is people like me who get to decide the aesthetics of a church when acoustical design is left out. This goes for new churches, storefront churches, churches moving into commercial buildings or are using commercial building designs and churches doing renovations. If you are an architect, include us at the beginning of the design process and the aesthetics will be all about you. Leave us out of the design process and no matter how beautiful a space you thought you designed, it will be people like me who get to decide it’s final finish and sometimes, what we do is not very flattering but when it sounds great, the less than pleasing acoustical treatment starts to look good.

Joseph De Buglio

PS: Don’t call us if you want someone to just rubber stamp your worship space designs.

The test room is well underway in becoming reality. Here is a photo of the crew transforming one of the rooms in my new home into a test lab.

This room will allow us to measure and test an unlimited number of configurations of equalizing and matching the acoustical fixed for churches. Since computer simulations don’t work with this technique of acoustical sound management for churches this is the next best thing. In earlier testing in other room years ago, the tests done translated very will into larger spaces. In the past, this testing was only to find the most common acoustical problems churches have. Since then, churches have been demanding even better room control and this test room will allow us to customize the acoustics of any worship space.

It is our hope that the ability for room testing will be ready in the next two weeks.